Nazi war criminal escapes Costa Brava police search

One of the most wanted Nazi war criminals may have fled the Costa Brava for another area of Spain or Denmark to escape an intense search by Spanish police.

Investigators believe that Aribert Heim, a concentration camp doctor, now 91, who injected hundreds of prisoners with lethal cocktails at Mauthausen in Austria, may have already fled to the Costa del Sol, in southern Spain, or Denmark, according to local press reports.

Spain's organised crime and fugitive units have conducted "dozens" of searches in the Costa Brava after receiving a tip from German police, the newspaper El Mundo reported. He is thought to have lived in the resort town of Roses for years. In June, police hoped he would surface to celebrate his 91st birthday.

Investigators tracking Dr Heim have had leads in various parts of Spain. Recently, police have focused their investigations on two artists living in Palafrugell, a town in Girona. The artists, a couple originally from France and Italy, allegedly received German bank transfers of €300,000 (£205,000) from one of Dr Heim's sons, El Mundo said. Police are trying to determine whether they helped hide Dr Heim and acted as a front to sustain him economically - or simply sold their works of art.

The couple aroused suspicion because of their frequent travels to Denmark, where investigators believe Dr Heim may have a network of support and where his son set up a telephone line in the fugitive's name, El Mundo said.

Investigators have also been watching neo-nazi groups based on the Costa Brava who might have helped shelter him from police. Police sources in Catalonia, who refused to be named, confirmed that Dr Heim was in Girona recently. They declined to give details.

According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the most recent lead came from an Israeli citizen who told the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel he had met a man who looked like Dr Heim on the Spanish holiday island of Ibiza.

"The man told us about an elderly man with a German accent who noticed him when he spoke with a friend in Hebrew in a shop," Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Jerusalem branch, told Ha'aretz. "The old man made a remark about it to the shopkeeper and entered his car. The Israeli, who was disturbed by the old man's behaviour, noted the licence number, and we gave it to the Germans." The car turned out to be stolen and the description of tall elderly man with a prominent scar matched Dr Heim's, Ha'aretz said.

In early September, police said the hunt had also led to Alicante, on Spain's south-eastern coast. Police combed old people's homes and looked for elderly Germans with private nurses in the region, where many foreign pensioners live.

Dr Heim, known for performing surgery without anaesthesia and for timing prisoners' deaths with a watch, is regarded as the second most-wanted former Nazi by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, after Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's righthand man. He was briefly detained by US troops at the end of the war. He fled Germany in 1962, when police opened an investigation on him. Both Germany and Austria have issued warrants for his arrest.

A reward for his capture has been offered, and Spanish police have issued a computer-enhanced photograph of how he might look today. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has evidence that he is still alive, a spokesman said. Dr Heim has also evaded capture in Argentina, Denmark and Brazil and has amassed more than £1m in a Berlin bank, the spokesman said.